Four vying for three seats on Keefe Tech board

Three incumbents face a single challenger in this year's race to represent the town on the Keefe Tech School Committee.

John Hilliard/Daily News staff

Three incumbents face a single challenger in this year's race to represent the town on the Keefe Tech School Committee.

Chairman Nelson Goldin and members Esther Hopkins and Argentina Arias are running to keep their three-year positions on the panel. Challenger James Cameau, a Brophy Elementary School special education teacher, is making his first run for the board.

Unlike Keefe's other member towns - Natick, Ashland, Holliston and Hopkinton - Framingham is the only town that holds elections for each of its eight representatives to the 16-person school board. About three-quarters of the school's students are from Framingham. Selectmen from the other towns appoint their representatives.

The board's chairman, Goldin, joined the Keefe board in 2000, but has been involved with the regional school since it was founded in 1973.

At the time, his company, Waverley Auto Parts, helped support the school's automotive program, served on the department's advisory board and later on a similar panel for Keefe's graphic arts program.

"Keefe Tech has become part of my life," said Goldin.

Goldin is a former Town Meeting member, and served on Southborough's Finance Committee and was that town's moderator in the 1970s. He said he has a lot of experience with the Keefe Tech budget, which he expects will be kept to a relatively small increase for the coming year.

According to Keefe Tech Superintendent-Director Jim Lynch, school officials believe they can keep a fiscal 2010 budget increase to less than half of one percent, or about $70,400 more than the current $15.2 million budget.

"We are doing everything we can to be part of the (financial) solution for our five towns," said Lynch.

Lynch said cost savings were accomplished partly by eliminated new technology purchases and cutting four jobs through attrition, along with other measures. There will be a public hearing on the Keefe Tech budget on Monday, Feb. 2 at 7 p.m. at the school building, he said.

Goldin's colleague, Esther Hopkins, is running for her second term on the panel. The former selectman, Finance Committee and Town Meeting member said she wants to continue working to boost Keefe's enrollment and make residents aware of the benefits of having Keefe in Framingham.

There are fewer than 700 students at Keefe right now, and its building could handle more than 750 pupils, she said. The school gives students skills they may not find in college, such carpentry, construction and design, said Hopkins.

Hopkins, who has a law degree from Suffolk University and a doctorate from Yale, said the school also provides many services to the town, such as students who work as landscapers and home builders on projects in the region.

"We owe it to the people who elect us here to get their money's worth," said Hopkins.

The sole newcomer to the race, Cameau has been an assistant teacher in special ed classes for 11 years in Framingham, where he has lived since 1986.

He now works at the Brophy school, where he teaches in an 22-student special ed classroom made up of third- through fifth-graders. He has also taught at Stapleton Elementary School and the high school.

In those classes, teachers have high expectations for students, and "we usually get that," he said.

According to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, just under 40 percent of Keefe Tech students participate in some form of special education program. Cameau said Keefe gives many special ed students the training they'll need for having successful lives.

"They thrive at Keefe Tech," said Cameau.

He said he wants to join the school's board because of his background in special education, and wants to contribute to Keefe's involvement in those efforts.

Cameau also worked for about seven years as a rehabilitation technician with elderly patients through MetroWest Medical Center.

Arias, who was elected to the board in 2000, could not be reached for comment. She has been a member of the Framingham Coalition for the Prevention of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, the South Middlesex Latin American Center and the Massachusetts Education Initiative for Latin Students.

(John Hilliard can be reached at 508-626-4449 or John.Hilliard @cnc.com.)

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